Didactical Tool for Wing Weight Estimation in a Preliminary Aircraft Design Stage

Abstract

Aircraft preliminary design requires a lot of complex evaluations and assumptions related to design variables that are not completely known at a very initial stage. Didactical activity becomes unclear since students ask for precise values in the starting point. A tentative in providing a simple tool for wing weight estimation is presented devoted to overcome these common difficulties and clarifies the following points: a) the intrinsic iterative nature of the preliminary design stage, b) provide useful and realistic calculation for the wing weight with very simple assumption not covered by cumbersome calculations and formulas. The procedure is applied to the calculation of wing weight for a typical general aviation aircraft in the preliminary design stage. The effect of the main variables on the wing weight variation is also presented confirming well-known results from literature and design manuals.